Intolerance in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn :: essays papers

Intolerance in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The entire plot of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is rooted on intolerance between different social groups. Without prejudice and intolerance The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would not have any of the antagonism or intercourse that makes the recital interesting. The prejudice and intolerance found in the book are the characteristics that make The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a great American Classic. The author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Samuel Langhorn, who is more commonly known by his pen name, Mark Twain. He was born in 1835 with the passing of Haley's comet, and died in 1910 with the passing of Haley's comet. Twain often used prejudice as a building block for the plots of his stories. Twain even said, "The very ink in which history is written is merely fluid prejudice." There are many other instances in which Twain uses prejudice as a foundation for the entertainment of his writings. Even in the opening paragraph of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Twain states, "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." There were many groups that Twain contrasted in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The interaction of these different social groups is what makes up the main plot of the novel. For the objective of discussion they have been broken down into five main sets of antithetic parties: people with high levels of melanin and people with low levels of melanin, rednecks and scholarly, children and adults, men and women, and finally, the Sheperdson's and the Grangerford's. Whites and African Americans are the main two groups contrasted in the novel. Throughout the novel Twain portrays Caucasians as a more educated group that is higher in society compared to the African Americans portrayed in the novel. The cardinal way that Twain portrays African Americans as obsequious is through the colloquy that he assigns them. Their dialogue is composed of nothing but broken English. One example in the novel is this excerpt from the conversation between Jim the fugitive slave, and Huckleberry about why Jim ran away, where Jim declares, "Well you see, it 'uz dis way. Ole missus-dat's Miss Watson-she pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she woudn' sell me down to Orleans." Although this is the phonetic spelling of how some African Americans from the boondocks used to talk, Twain only applied the argot to Blacks